MOSCOW, Aug 13: At least 30 Muslim militants and 10 government soldiers died between Friday and Sunday during fighting in Kyrgystan, Interfax reported, citing the republic's president's office as saying.
Kyrgyz defence officials had earlier said 20 soldiers had died, and the militants had suffered only "minor" losses. Interfax cited witness accounts of 19 bodies of soldiers.
Government forces said they had surrounded a group of some 100 militants, massed near the border with Tajikistan in southern Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz National Security Secretary Bolot Dzhanuzakov, told AFP.
"Fierce clashes are continuing for the third day," he said.
Defence officials told AFP that some 500 militants had gathered in the east of Tajikistan and were poised to flood over the border into Kyrgyzstan. The Tajik defence ministry in Dushanbe denied the report.
On Saturday, the three Central Asian states of Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan agreed to join forces in the face of the militants' threat.
Ministers agreed to establish a joint centre in Tajikistan to fight the militants, the Kyrgyz presidency press service said in a statement.
Uzbekistan offered Kyrgyzstan the use of its air force to launch air strikes against the militants now in the Krygyz territory.
Armed Muslim commando groups, allegedly trained in camps in Taliban-held Afghanistan, have recently launched a series of assaults on the former-Soviet Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Experts have speculated that the attacks are part of a coordinated offensive aimed at establishing a new fighting front to destabilize the region.
In Dushanbe, military sources linked the militants' campaign to alleged international terrorist Osama bin Laden, thought to be based in Afghanistan.
According to the Uzbek government, the militants are seeking to create a base in an isolated mountain range to store weapons and food as they plan terrorist attacks on Uzbek territory and open transit routes for drugs and weapons.
Military sources in Tajikistan said they believed the operation was being coordinated by Uzbek warlord Jumaboi Namangani, who took refuge in May in the part of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban.
Namangani is believed to have about 600 fighters: up to 2,000 Uzbeks are estimated to be based in Afghanistan.
Local officials in southern Kyrgyzstan, where the latest fighting is taking place, said military headquarters in Biskhek had ignored a request for 300 tanks as reinforcement.-AFP
